1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of Internet search on mobile computer devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Efficient and relevant Internet search capabilities are among the key enabling factors that make the World Wide Web the primary resource for the management of global knowledge. It is virtually impossible to make any use of the immense amount of content, ideas, products and information available on the web if a user is unable to find what the user needs when the user needs it.
Search engines have progressed phenomenally since their relatively recent inception, with great innovation from the early web crawlers and manual index attempts, to the emergence of Google and its PageRank algorithm as the most prominent solution to the problem, to the creation of more specialized solutions that focus on specific vertical segments or technologies such as natural language, voice or real time search, including the convergence of Internet mapping and search applications in what has been called local search and other location-based services. The prominence of network enabled portable devices such as laptops, PDAs and cell phones, many of them also equipped with location-aware capabilities, makes local search capabilities more relevant than ever.
A perfect search engine would be “prescient”—given a user's brief description of what she needs to know, using its vast databases in combination with its knowledge about the user, her environment and needs, the search engine would respond with exactly the information she is looking for, and nothing else. Even with recent progress, this is often not the result of such a search, and often users have to look in the search results, both free and for pay, to find what is relevant to them in a relatively long list.
One useful way to optimize relevance is through the use of localized searches. In certain cases, the physical location of what we search for is extremely important—for example, finding a pizzeria open within a few blocks of the theater where the user is located. Services such as search on Google Maps or Yahoo Local provide localized results to both computers and mobile devices. These services are, however, tied to a specified area of interest or a user's current location.